ABSTRACT

Membrane Distillation(MD):Principle, Advances and Future

Prospects in Food Industry
MD is a thermally driven process, in which water vapour transport occurs through a
nonwetted porous hydrophobic membrane. The term MD comes from the similarity
between conventional distillation process and its membrane variant as both
technologies are based on the vapour-liquid equilibrium for separation and both of
them require the latent heat of evaporation for the phase change from liquid to
vapour which is achieved by heating the feed solution. The driving force for MD
process is given by the vapour pressure gradient which is generated by a
temperature difference across the membrane. As the driving force is not a pure
thermal driving force, membrane distillation can be held at a much lower
temperature than conventional thermal distillation. The water transport through the
membrane can be summarized in three steps: (1) formation of a vapour gap at the
hot feed solutionmembrane interface; (2) transport of the vapour phase through
the microporous system; (3) condensation of the vapour at the cold side
membranepermeate solution interface

The main food-related applications of membrane distillation are the desalination

and production of high purity water from brackish water and seawater. In
concentration of fruit juices containing oily constituents (such as limonene in orange
juice), membrane wetting may occur due to high affinity of hydrophobic membrane
material with such compounds. The MD process can be successfully applied to
remove ethanol and the other volatile metabolites from the fermentation broth